


Tell Me

by baranduin



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 18:01:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baranduin/pseuds/baranduin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anniversary angst at Bag End, written in admiration of Mary Borsellino's Pretty Good Year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tell Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written around 2002.

“Tell him to come to the table. Dinner’s getting cold.”

“I don’t think he’ll be hungry.”

Rosie stood facing Sam with her hands on her hips. Blowing a little on damp curls straying around her face, she fixed him with her best “I know what’s best here” look, but it did no good. Sam stared her down.

“Don’t you remember what day it is?” he asked.

“Washing day to me. And a hot one at that--too hot for March.”

“It was two years ago that we were on Mount Doom. He’s taking it bad today.”

“Sitting shut up in that stuffy study would make anyone feel bad any day. The way he locks himself up there day after day scribbling away in that book … it’s a wonder he’s not stark raving mad at this point.”

“He has to … to write it all down.”

“Who for?”

Sam sputtered a bit. “Well, to finish what Bilbo started, I reckon. It helps him to get it out.”

Rosie laughed and sat down on his lap, draping her arms around his strong neck. “Oh, Sam, I do love you, but you’re such a ninny about him sometimes.”

“Whaaat?”

“How can it help him if he just writes it down but doesn’t tell anyone direct? The way I see it, the poison goes out his fingers and then comes right back in through his eyes. Do you see him getting stronger? Do you see him getting well? If you do, you’ve better eyes than mine. Looks to me like he’s wasting away more every day. Missing another dinner isn’t going to help that.”

Sam sighed and stroked Rose’s head, brown fingers kneading her tired neck. “I know. But what can I do? I can’t make him come out, can’t make him stop working at his book. It wouldn’t be right.”

Rosie looked down at her Sam, a shrewd light in her eyes. “Does he tell you? You spend enough hours locked up with him in that room.”

“Tell me what?”

She shrugged. “Tell you what happened.”

“Why would he? I was there too, you know, every step of the way.”

“I know that, and I know every step you took with him like I walked them with you. Makes me shiver when I think of it, of all you went through.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I don’t know, I guess I mean does he tell it from his side? Tell you how it felt to him?”

Sam rested his cheek on Rose’s head, spoke softly against her curls. “No, not much. I asked him once or twice when I was in a remembering mood, but he didn’t want to. Said it was better to leave it be. I can’t force him, can I?”

“No, Sam, you can’t. Not you of all people.”

Rosie slid off Sam’s lap and sat down at the table. “Come on, dinner’s not going to improve if we sit here all evening.”

She was quiet and thoughtful the rest of the evening. In the middle of the night, as she was walking Elanor up and down, she saw a flickering light under the door of the study but didn’t go in.

* * *

The next day dawned hot and fine. Sam rose early to work in the garden, meaning to check on some of his plantings near Bywater in the afternoon.

Rosie puttered around Bag End--washing up the breakfast dishes, bathing Elanor. There was no sight or sound of Frodo.

Around noon, she went to his room, but it was empty, his bed unslept in. Sighing, she moved to the study and went in.

Frodo sat asleep at his desk, his head pillowed on a sheaf of papers, fingers curled around Arwen’s crystal. 

Rose felt a stab of regret that she had not come in to the study the night before and made him go to bed. She stood behind him and took him by the shoulder, shaking him lightly.

Frodo started awake. He looked up at her, violet smudges beneath his eyes that seemed to grow darker every day.

“Rose. What time is it?”

“About noon. That was bad of you not to go to bed last night.” She kneaded the tight muscles around his neck, listening with satisfaction to his groans of relief.

“That feels good.”

“And well it should. That desk is no proper pillow for your head, you know. Come into the kitchen for some food. You missed dinner again last night.”

“In a little while. I’m not hungry.”

Rose let go and moved aimlessly around the room, picking up a dropped book and putting it back on a shelf, straightening disordered papers. She kept her back to Frodo so he wouldn’t see her pursed lips.

Her voice was soft when she spoke. “I missed your anniversary yesterday. Sorry.”

She turned around and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of Frodo sitting bolt upright with his eyes shifting from side to side. ‘He looks like a coney ready to bolt. Well, here’s one coney who’ll not get away from me,’ she thought.

“Truly, I meant to say something to you yesterday. Guess I missed my chance when you didn’t come in to dinner.”

Frodo stared at her, his mouth working. Finally, he breathed out hard. “That’s all right. It was just another day.”

“Ah, another day. Another day of locking yourself up in here and torturing yourself with those memories you tell to no one but that damned book.”

He said nothing, just looked at Rosie with his impossibly wide eyes pleading for her to go away and leave him to his book. ‘He uses that look a little too often. It’ll not work on me today.’

She said, “You know, I really should apologize to you.”

“For what?”

“For not asking you about your adventures. Lord knows I’ve heard it all time and again from Sam, there’s a little of the braggart in even the most humble hobbit. But I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a peep from your own lips, Master Frodo. I reckon I’ve missed the most important stuff.”

Frodo tilted his head like a hypnotized bird. “No … no. Sam will have told you everything important.”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

Rose drew a chair close up to Frodo and sat on it. Leaning forward, she pressed her hand to his heart and felt it beating wildly.

Frodo whispered, “Please … it doesn’t matter … not important.”

“I think it is. It matters to me. How do you think I feel seeing you getting thinner and paler every day? Not much of a compliment to my cooking.” 

Rosie smiled at Frodo, wincing inside at the pinched look on his pale face. ‘Has to be done. It’ll come right in the end even though it hurts now.’

She took his hands into hers, gently rubbing his stump with her thumb.

“You can’t get well if you don’t tell anyone but that blasted book.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“How do you know unless you try? My, you’re not exactly bowling me over with your compliments today.”

“It wouldn’t be right for you to hear such things. You shouldn’t have to hear them. No one should.”

“That’s right. No one should, not even you.”

Frodo tried the pleading look again.

“And that’s not going to work, either. You’ve used that sad, soft look on me for the last time.”

Frodo blinked. Rosie laughed (it was laugh or cry and she couldn’t afford to cry right now) and stroked his cheek, feeling sharp bones under paper thin skin.

She said tenderly, “Tell me your story.”

Frodo slumped into his chair and looked at Rosie with a resignation that made her crow inside a little. “Well, I … I ...” He laughed and said, “I don’t know where to start. Where do you want me to start?”

“Well, most people start at the beginning. But seeing as you’re not like most people, you just start anywhere you like and I’ll ask you if I don’t understand.”

Frodo nodded gravely and began, his soft voice eventually growing a little hoarse from lack of use. He closed his eyes first, and then Rosie closed her eyes as the gentle voice went on and on and on, telling her things she could not have imagined even from the darkest nightmare.

‘So much pain.’

And his voice went on in the dim little room while outside birds sang in the bright sunlight of a Shire afternoon.


	2. Scrambled Eggs With Strawberry Jam

“Are you hungry, Sam?”

“And how did you know it was me coming in?”

Rose hmphed at the pot of porridge she was stirring with a steady hand; the porridge hmphed right back at her with a gentle gloop. “As if I wouldn’t know my own husband’s footsteps.” Sliding the pot away from the fire—scorched porridge never did anyone’s disposition any good, even one so naturally sunny as her Sam—she turned round and smiled at him. _Oh, my,_ she thought as she watched him leaning against the doorway drying his face from his morning wash. _What’d he do, bring a little of the sun inside with him?_

“Set yourself down. Breakfast is almost ready. Hungry?”

“That I am.” On his way to the table, Sam bent over Elanor’s cradle, a wide smile splitting his face as he stroked his sleeping daughter’s cheek with the backs of his scrubbed fingers. His chair squeaked on the flagstone floor when he drew it up to the table and dug into the steaming bowl Rose placed in front of him. Of course, it wasn’t just a plain bowl of bland oatmeal, no indeed—not with the brown sugar carving little gorges, a thick pat of butter melting into the pool of yellow cream floating around the bowl’s edge, the dried currants winking up at him. Oh, it was as fine a bowl of oatmeal as you could want, and the first bite proved it.

Only one thing made it less than perfect. 

“Should I go get him?” Sam asked. Rose put down her spoon and looked at it thoughtfully for a minute.

“No … not today. Let him sleep.” She shook her head and picked up the spoon again, scooping up a mound of the warm sweet cereal. “He’s earned his rest, I’d say.”

Sam nodded. “Aye, he did. I don’t think I’ve seen him sleep so easy in months … nor so long and hard. It was a good thing you did yesterday.” Reaching across the table, Sam squeezed Rose’s hand. “Thank you. I couldn’t do it myself.”

A bright flush crept up Rose’s neck, and she pushed Sam’s hand away though not without an extra tight squeeze before she let go. “You did what you needed to do when it counted the most.” When Sam said nothing—just stared at Rose with the steady look that always made her feel like she was a tweenager again watching him out of the corner of her eye as she walked along Bagshot Row—Rose backed away from the table and turned toward the stove. While she was waiting for the cast iron skillet to heat, she pulled out eggs and bacon, cut thick slices of bread for toasting.

The clink of spoon against bowl was the only sound in the room until the bacon hit the hot pan with a hiss and a sizzle. As the salty sweet aroma filled the kitchen, Rose asked, “How do you want your eggs today … fried?”

“Scrambled,” came the answer but not from Sam.

Rose didn’t turn around; she didn’t have to and didn’t want to, not with the sudden tears stinging her eyes. “Scrambled it is … and you, Sam?”

“That’ll do me as well … hey!”

A fierce struggle over the remnants of Sam’s oatmeal met Rose’s eyes when she turned around to see what the commotion was. Smiling broadly, she dipped her ladle into the pot and plopped more porridge into what was now Frodo’s bowl. Passing him the sugar and cream, currants and butter, she said with her mouth quirked to one side, “Are you sure you can eat all this? Not that I’m complaining, you know …”

If Rose thought Sam had brought a bit of the sun inside, when Frodo looked her in the eye, she knew that the sky had come in as well. The clear blue untroubled sky of the Shire on a warm spring morning such as this. 

It was a good thing that Rose didn’t mind Frodo devouring the oatmeal, for she got nary an answer from him but for a sort of muffled “mmm …”. And that was the best answer she could have hoped for.

“Rose-lass … the bacon?” 

“Right, Sam!” She turned back to the stove and rescued the curling rashers just moments before smoking incineration. “Will you toast the bread for me, Sam?”

Joining Rose at the stove, Sam took the thick slices of bread and loaded them into the hearth toaster before kneeling at the cheerful blaze and grilling his face as well as the bread. He and Rose took turns studiously keeping track of toasting bread and frying bacon and scrambling eggs—weaving around each other as they set the table—and giving each other little glances of delighted surprise. For when Frodo had finished his bowl of porridge (only licking it would have cleaned it out more completely), he wandered over to Elanor’s crib while he waited for his bacon and eggs. 

Frodo picked up Elanor and held her against his cheek, the bright gold of her curly head nestled against his pale skin which, Rose was sure, wasn’t quite so pasty white as it had been yesterday. Surely there was a rosy tint in his cheeks that wasn’t just due to the heat of the kitchen. 

When Rose felt the telltale prickles at the backs of her eyes again, she shook herself and said, “Are you planning on feeding her if she wakes? Because I’m going to be enjoying my breakfast.”

Frodo smiled, and not only with his lips. After a quick nuzzle on top of Elly’s sleeping head, he laid her down gently in her cradle and tucked the covers around her. 

A minute or two later—it seemed like half an hour according to Frodo’s growling stomach—the three sat down to the main course. The honey-cured bacon was fried to a perfectly caramelized crispness, which made the scrambled eggs seem that much more velvety and buttery as they melted on eager tongues. The tall stack of toasted bread which had seemed way too much to Sam when he had been grilling it was in fair danger of disappearing in a matter of minutes. A round pitcher of new milk sat in the center of the table, condensation beading on its exterior.

Seeing as these were three hobbits breaking their fast, there wasn’t much in the way of talk except for “pass the salt, please” and such things. After a few minutes of concentrated eating, Frodo raised his head and asked, “Is there any jam?”

Rose jumped up. “Of course … I just forgot. What kind?”

“Oh, strawberry … why would I want any other kind?” Frodo and Sam exchanged a quick look and rolled their eyes. Rose’s strawberry jam was acknowledged to be the finest in the Shire, being that it had won the blue ribbon at last summer’s Free Fair on the White Downs. Even Marigold didn't disagree with that assessment, though it sorely tried Rose to give up even one jar of the precious stuff to her.

Before Rose even had the chance to sit herself back down at the table, Frodo asked, “Are there more eggs?” Sure enough, a quick scan of his plate showed a distinct lack.

“My goodness, that was quick work. Where are you putting it?” Rose exchanged another quick look with Sam, both of them grinning now like the happy fools they were. “You’d think he’d been out checking on saplings with you along the Bywater road instead of lurking inside with me yesterday.” She tipped the rest of the eggs onto Frodo’s plate and added another rasher of bacon to keep them company.

Frodo took a bite. “Talking is hungry work … thirsty, too.”

“Was it worth it?” Sam asked, his voice grown gruff for fear that it wouldn’t come out at all.

“It is today.”

Neither Rose nor Sam could argue with that, not that they were of a mind to do so. Not even when Frodo loaded his fork with another bite of sunny yellow eggs and dipped them into the glistening pool of sweet strawberry jam, an outlandish combination that somehow seemed just the right thing this fine spring morning at Bag End.


End file.
